The African Democratic Congress has said its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, will campaign in all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory ahead of the January 16, 2027 election, setting up a contrast with President Bola Tinubu’s decision to appear personally at rallies in only 12 states. Phrank Shaibu, the ADC campaign council’s director of strategic communication, said on ARISE News on Sunday that no state would be left out and that the schedule would be released within days.
Shaibu said the campaign would combine town hall meetings, community visits and rallies, reaching local government areas and villages rather than stopping at state capitals. “The man who is hungry in Zamfara is the same as the man who is hungry in Lagos,” he said, rejecting the suggestion that Atiku’s appeal is confined to the North. Asked which southern states Atiku expected to win, he said: “I will not just be bold; I will be audacious about it. Atiku will win the entire country.”
The claim is politically confident but electorally untested. Atiku has contested the presidency six times, beginning in 1993, and has lost every one, including 2023, when he polled 6,984,520 votes and won 12 states. Tinubu won 8,794,726 votes and 12 states, while Peter Obi took 11 states and the FCT. No candidate since 1999 has won a majority of the 36 states, and the 2023 result showed how regional the vote had become.
The ADC’s 75-day town hall series, tagged “Tested Leadership: Making Nigeria Affordable Again,” begins in the South-South in the first week of November and will cover all six geopolitical zones. The themes are the cost of living, food and fuel affordability, job creation, national unity and education reform, a direct appeal to the economic discontent that has defined the Tinubu years.
The contrast with the President’s itinerary is deliberate. Tinubu told the APC Presidential Campaign Council at its inauguration on October 14 that he would not abandon governance for campaigning. “The responsibility of this office does not pause,” he said. His campaign spokesman, Dele Alake, later defended the decision to attend rallies in 12 “zonal pivotal states,” arguing that the President was balancing the demands of office with the election.
The 12-state schedule runs from Kaduna on October 24 to Lagos on January 9, 2027, covering all six zones but with three cities each in the North-West and North-East and only one each in the North-Central and South-East. The South-East, where Tinubu polled 127,605 votes in 2023, is represented only by Enugu. The South-South has Port Harcourt and Asaba. The South-West has Ibadan and Lagos. The North-Central has only Jos.
The ADC has seized on that arithmetic. Its argument is that a president seeking re-election should meet voters wherever they are, not only where the electoral map is most favourable. The APC’s counter is that a sitting president cannot campaign as a challenger does and that the selected states are where the election will be decided.
The numbers give both sides something to work with. In 2023, Tinubu won 12 states, Atiku won 12 and Obi won 11 plus the FCT. The three-way split produced the lowest winning vote share since 1999 and left the country more regionally divided than at any point since the return to democracy. Atiku’s path to victory would require him to hold the North and make inroads in the South, something he failed to do against a united APC in 2023 and against a divided opposition this time.
The campaign is also unfolding under a new legal framework. The Electoral Act 2026, which President Tinubu assented to in February, raised the presidential campaign spending ceiling from ₦5 billion to ₦10 billion, mandated the electronic transmission of results and required parties to submit digital membership registers before primaries. The Act also fixed the presidential election for January 16, moving it forward from the original February date.
Atiku has promised to end election rigging and strengthen INEC’s independence, and the ADC has positioned itself as the party that will cut the cost of governance. Whether a 36-state campaign can translate into the votes to unseat an incumbent is the question the next three months will answer.